The fact that Roger Ailes is a powerful force in media comes as no surprise to anyone, but what might shock you is just how powerful he is. Not only does he head up the Fox News Channel, he also programs a second news network and directs the content of several non-profit organizations. Well, not exactly, or at least directly. See, without the programming on Fox News at least half of MSNBC’s primetime lineup wouldn’t have any content, and basement bloggers at Media Matters might spend less time transcribing the thoughts of others and venture outside every once in a while. But Fox News does exist, so those “fellows” at Media Matters will still have to get their vitamin D through supplements and MSNBC will have content.
Do you watch MSNBC? If you’re like most Americans, the answer is no. You may have come across it while flipping around, and if you flipped fast enough you may have thought your television provider put Fox News on two channels. Considering the ratings, that would almost make sense. Fox routinely more than doubles the ratings of MSNBC, and there’s good reason for that.
MSNBC spends the majority of its time defending Democrats, but when not justifying left-wing actions, their hosts (I don’t call them anchors because that implies a news component to their actions) are running clips of Fox News shows. Why would any network devote such a significant portion of their precious air time to showing and commenting on the content of their main ratings competitor? That’s a good question and one that, at least from journalistic and business perspectives, makes no sense. But once you realize MSNBC has no interest in either of those perspectives, nor do they seem to care about broadening their audience, you’re left with one plausible alternative – it’s the agenda, stupid.
But MSNBC didn’t just come up with this Fox obsessed programming out of thin air, there’s been a movement on the American Left to silence Fox News and anyone who may watch it for years now.
The “non-partisan think tank” known as Media Matters for America was founded in 2004 for the purpose of “correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Yes, you read that correctly, the media, in their delusional mind, has a conservative bent and they’ve taken it upon themselves to “correct” it. It’s a bit like forming the Society to Ensure the Sun Rises in the East – pretend a problem exists, set about to solve it and claim victory when what was going to happen anyway happens.
Founded by David Brock, a former “journalist” who was once a conservative, but somehow, one day, switch every single one of his views 180 degrees to become a devoted leftists, Media Matters, to boil it down to what it really is, employs people to stalk blogs and watch TV or listen to radio they hate all day, transcribe it, take quotes out of context, spin them and send them out to nearly every media outlet in the country. You’d think something so blatantly boring, not to mention pathetic, would be laughed at for the joke it is, and for the most part it is, but when MSNBC was looking for a niche for itself to try and attract an audience, the Media Matters parasite found its host.
“Fellows” and “Senior Fellows” in what can only be described as just this side of court stenography at Media Matters started routinely appearing on MSNBC to discuss the results of their “studies” that came to such shocking conclusions as conservative TV and radio host Sean Hannity is, in fact, a conservative. Or that conservative radio host Mark Levin isn’t the biggest fan of Hillary Clinton. It’s an endless stream of Earth-shattering revelations.
But their biggest target is Fox News in general, and they are Terminator-like in their determination that no one be exposed to the information disseminated on the network that Ailes built knows no bounds. They will defend anything a liberal is exposed doing, be it aiding child prostitution in the ACORN or Planned Parenthood tapes to NPR executive claiming Jews control newspapers, there is no bridge too far. “Senior Fellow” Eric Boehlert was out early on Twitter blaming Sarah Palin and Conservatives for the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Twitter within hours of it happening, a meme with soon found its way to MSNBC. Boehlert will sometimes rephrase his spin ten times in ten different tweets throughout the day so any of his followers who might’ve been tempted by the draw of reality will be sure the last thing they see is his version. How Media Matters maintains its “charity” status with the IRS remains a mystery.
Their main argument is anything found to be negative towards liberals is “taken out of context,” something they excel at doing. They created the talking point still echoing in the halls of MSNBC anytime about the ACORN tapes that they were “heavily edited,” as if there was some context in which giving advice to someone on how best to import teen-age sex slaves from South America could be taken out of. But reality and logic have no place in the world of a zealot. MSNBC hosts spout Media Matters talking points with all the skepticism a Muppet has towards its master.
Since this symbiotic relationship isn’t for ratings (any look at MSNBC’s ratings shows they don’t have any), the only logical conclusion is it’s for the agenda. Media Matters was founded, and is funded, by the typical left-wing billion-and-millionaires who fund the Left-Wing Industrial Complex, George Soros, et. al., who keep an army of flying monkeys at their disposal to advance whatever their whim of the day happens to be. These wealthy people, who routinely complain that taxes are too low and could easily live the life they seek to impose on others by not availing themselves of the tax deductions and trust funds their accounting firms crawl through the tax code to find, give tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations designed to manipulate public opinion so they can achieve their means. And the biggest impediment in their way to reaching their Utopian goal, as they see it, is Fox News. The network Roger Ailes runs won’t play ball, so they must be destroyed.
But Media Matters and MSNBC aren’t winning new converts, so what’s the point? It’s to keep the true believers true, to keep in line those so inclined to be on the political left. They ridicule opinions that differ from theirs and attack outlets that cover stories they don’t like. They watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh so you don’t have to, they say. More importantly, they ridicule those who won’t toe the line so those who subscribe to their beliefs won’t bother to tune in and will, therefore, be less likely to question their dogma. It’s a tactic as old as time – use any method possible to discredit someone on any issue, no matter how small, so people will question anything that person says.
An out of context quote can give any impression in which you frame it. An obviously sarcastic remark or joke loses all humor and can come across completely differently. This is why you will, more often than not, see MSNBC hosts playing very short clips or reading quotes rather than play easily available audio of so-called in full context. People who only expose themselves to these outlets are not only being misinformed, they’re being kept in line.
On any given day you can check the Media Matters website (and to a lesser degree the Huffington Post) and know what will be coming out of the mouths of Kermit, Ms. Piggy, Fozzie and the rest of the Muppets on MSNBC that evening. They do it without shame or any attempt to disguise their bias, all the while complaining that Fox is biased. It’s comical, especially considering the election results after a year-long concerted effort to try and paint the tea party as racist, yet on they slog. It’s easy to not be deterred by reality when the money train bypasses that stop on the way to fantasyland, and there’s no better, less effective one-two punch than Media Matters and MSNBC.
You can stalk Derek on Twitter at @DerekAHunter
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